I watched 6 movies last week:
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- If you want to watch a purportedly groovy musical from the writer-director of The Quatermass Xperiment about dying aliens who kidnap Olivia Newton-John’s rock group to learn about vibrations or something, then Toomorrow has you covered. But it’s not a fun experience. As Kim Newman wrote in Offbeat: British Cinema’s Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Gems, “Toomorrow is inoffensive and has nothing to say, but remains a fascinating relic from that period when hopeless entertainment industry squares were trying to get hip and hook the affluent but disaffected youth audience.”
- Ashes and Diamonds is a stunning piece of work, so alive for a nearly 70-year-old black and white Polish film, and full of indelible images and performances.
- The fact that I find Dustin Hoffman’s Max Dembo so frustrating as a character in Straight Time is, I think, a large part of the point. I expected it take more to push him to the breaking point, but the fact that it doesn’t is maybe more important.
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- Pillion is remarkably self-assured for a first-time feature, and surprisingly heartfelt, never inviting us to judge these characters even if we might not share their needs and desires.
- This Sporting Life is a remarkable film, one of the best examples of British kitchen sink realism, but oh man is it incredibly bleak.
- It’s difficult to look past the many offensive racist caricatures in The Mask of Fu Manchu, but if you can, you’ll find beneath that a desperately slow, often poorly staged and hokey melodrama, dated in lots of other ways, and only of passing interest because of the early (though not particularly good) performances by Karloff and Loy.
I also rewatched—and thoroughly loved—Sullivan’s Travels.